Sunday, March 30, 2014

Let's Talk About Treatsie Again

I had first heard of and blogged about Treatsie last month when I ordered a taster box for myself and a 3-month subscription for a friend's birthday. My friend loved the first box she received and is looking forward to the next two. I myself enjoyed the taster box and meant to go back to order again but time got away from me (WHY is it already the end of March?!?).

But since I had ordered, I was in their customer database and have been getting promotional emails from them. I hadn't had any time to take advantage of them as most of the coupons have only had a 24-hour shelf life and I've been too busy to follow up. But I got one on March 19 for National Chocolate Caramel Day with a coupon for 20% off "any caramel product". Caramel, did you say? Back to the website I went.

CC Made Classic Caramel Popcorn

The Treatsie website is rather efficiently organized. You can browse products by certain filters: new arrivals, best selling, type, brand, by box and by flavor. Since I was there for a purpose, I went through the Flavor navigation route and clicked on "Caramel" to see what I could use the coupon on. The first product that caught my eye was CC Made Classic Caramel Popcorn. My mouse finger involuntarily twitched and that caramel popcorn was in my shopping cart before my brain finished processing "....corn". Mission accomplished.

But wait! Did you know Treatsie only charges a flat $5 shipping fee no matter if you order 1 item or 20? The finance nerd in me insisted I had to leverage that flat fee. I was going to pay that $5 anyway and if I only got the caramel popcorn, wow, that was a little unfair to burden that poor popcorn with all of the shipping cost. But hey, if I added the Tcho Tchunky Tchotella and the Almond Toffee with Milk Chocolate, they could share the expense. And I had a 20% coupon that applied to my entire order as long as one item was a caramel product so it was really like getting free shipping as long as I bought at least $25 worth of treats. See, I excel at rationalization.

Toffee made of ingredients I recognize

Except....after I loaded up my shopping cart and entered the coupon code, I got an error message saying none of the items in my cart qualified for the discount. Um, CARAMEL popcorn doesn't qualify for the caramel discount? Splutter. Why? Now, normally, when I run into issues like this, I would just give up and not bother to proceed. It's discretionary spend and calories I didn't need anyway so I can be just as easily talked out of ordering as I can in persuading myself to order. If I had been on amazon or Target or Costco's website, I would've just walked at that point. But Treatsie is a small business promoting other small businesses so I was willing to make a little extra effort to put my order in and give them the business. And it had almost nothing to do with suddenly wanting some caramel corn.

I emailed the contact email listed on their site, forwarding the promo email I'd received, explaining the caramel item in my order, how I had found it by clicking on "caramel" in their Flavor section, asked if there was a glitch, and if not, what products qualified for the discount? To my (pleasant) surprise, I received a response within minutes from Jamie, the co-founder of Treatsie, explaining they had originally set up the coupon code for caramels (e.g. the actual caramels they sell on their site) but that I had brought up a good point so they changed it so that the coupon could also be used for products that had caramel in them. Like my popcorn.

Wow. Okay, this is why I love supporting small businesses. Timely response. Check. Straightforward explanation. Got it. Reasonable accommodation. Double check. And I got to communicate with someone empowered to make the change and who did make the change immediately. I got a straight response, I didn't get fobbed off and I wasn't given excuses. Right after I got Jamie's response, I completed my order, including the coupon code and everything was processed without a hitch. By Jamie's response and follow through, Treatsie just ensured they got a repeat customer by a simple, common sense handling of the situation. So many times you hear horror stories about customer service issues but this isn't one of them.

By the way? The stuff I ordered? Top notch. Can't wait to try more treats....as soon as I log more miles on the treadmill.